


the falling of things

by a_fandom_affliction



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 00:52:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6448960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_fandom_affliction/pseuds/a_fandom_affliction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is obsessed with him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And Cas is obsessed with Dean, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the falling of things

 

 

_~in the end~_  
  
  
People are terrified of complexity. 

  
Black and white. That’s the thing. When he was a child, Dean thought that the world before him had been all in black and white. Like the pictures of the past that people showed him. And really, he was right. And really, he was wrong. 

  
Because nothing has changed. Things might seem to be all in colour. 

  
But really it’s black. And really it’s white. 

  
In the end. 

  
He kneels by Castiel’s body. Black blood. White skin. That gaze, intense even now. 

  
“You stupid son of a bitch,” he says. And then he makes himself stand tall and straight. He makes himself deal with the task at hand. When everything’s gone. The body. 

  
  
_~once upon a time~_  


  
Early on, when he’s trying to be impressive and equal and unintimidated, he calls Cas things. Things no one else would dare. Even the people who know him, the great angel, think he’s more myth than man.  


Dean sees the man behind the Grace. That’s what makes him terrifying. That he’s small and he has these delicate hands and his nails are always clean. That’s something which makes Dean’s stomach clench with fear. His perfectly polished shoes and his trimmed nails and his soft, small hands. 

  
“You’re mad,” he tells Cas  when they meet for the fourth time, when he has sent Dean to kill one witch and it has ended in the hands-on slaughter of eight. (If there’s more, there’s more. There won’t be, but… Don’t leave any mouths behind to talk.)

 

Cas looks at him. “I am not angry.” He has a specific way of speaking. He draws each word out so it’s almost a song, a reverent praising. Then he pulls a face, confused and briefly sad. “My apologies for the mix-up. Don’t sit down. You’re all gory.” 

  
“I’m all… You sent me into a bloodbath.” 

  
“My favourite kind. Most relaxing.” Cas said, in that clear, rough way of his that makes it impossible for Dean to tell if he’s trying to make a joke. They couldn’t be more opposite. Dean, tall and strong and coated in blood, and Cas, shorter and slight and so clean in his sharp suit. “You’ll have to tell me all about it. Tell me a story, Dean. Don’t leave out any good bits. 

  
“What?” And Dean can’t help but laugh. “Shit. A madman.” 

  
Cas opens his eyes and they’re dark. Dark and light and impenetrable and Dean is silenced by the sheer largeness of him, suddenly. No. Not of him. Of whatever thing is in him that makes him what he is. “Now, now, don’t be rude. I don’t want bad things to happen to you.”

  
Dean has to take a moment. To breathe. “Bad things always happen to me.” 

  
He expects to be put down, then. Instead Cas frowns very slightly, lowering his hand. “Don’t be so human. You’re disappointing me.” 

  
“Didn’t realise I was here to please you. Thought I was here for work. Stopping the apocalypse, and all that.” 

  
“Consider this all part of your work,” Cas says, and his voice might be calm, but his eyes are still bottomless. A well of nothing. Deep enough to drown a man. “Consider this your life. Me. Now. Or off you go.” 

  
It’s a trick. A noose, handed over. 

  
And Dean stays.  


-  
  
Dean sees him with other people, people he keeps further away. People he does business with in any capacity. He keeps to the sidelines, and allows Dean to do what he does. He doesn’t kill unless he has to.

 

Dean is a blunt instrument, a hammer, and Cas is a siren song. Singing them to sleep, that’s how he’d have done it. Lulling, lulling. Soft.

  
  
He’s like that with everyone. So it’s a surprise, but not much of one, when Cas asks him to stay closer. When Cas tells him to take off his clothes. 

  
“You’re never clean. I’m going to wash you.” 

  
“You’re going to wash me?”

 

“Yes,” Cas doesn’t even look up. “Go on. I won’t have you touching me looking like that.”

  
Dean holds himself upright. Like a soldier. “No disrespect, man, but…” 

  
“Oh, don’t. Don’t fuss. Don’t make me say things, explain the obvious. My voice is tired. Don’t make it boring.” He pauses and his voice does seem scratchy. He’s exhausted, Dean realises. There are shadows like bruises under his eyes. Dean didn’t even know it was possible for Cas to be exhausted. “I hate people who skip to the end of stories,” Cas says after a moment, and he frowns. “So don’t.” 

  
_Consider this your life._ _  
_

  
_It’s too late to walk the other way._

  
_Once you shake hands with him, the deal’s done._

  
Dean slips out of his jacket and begins to unbutton his shirt.  


-  


He shows Dean the stars. Names them, and for all Dean knows, he could be making it all up. He’s an excellent storyteller. Silver tongued caresses wrapped up in just enough gentle to make it believable.

  
But he likes to think he knows when Cas isn’t lying. When Cas takes him to Maine and shows him how the sky is so much clearer here, how the tang of salt air seems to clear the clouds even though it rains and rains and rains. It’s something true.  


He’s more relaxed here and Dean likes it more than he should. That Cas will for once loosen his shoulders and calm down a little. Just a little. Nothing anyone else would notice. But he lies on the grass in the cool of the night. His voice softens like a lost memory.  


Cas names the stars for him and then expects him to remember them, to recite them back, to remember all the facts and theories and formulas, the myths and the legends.  


“Aren’t they all dead, anyway?” Dean asks him irritably and Cas sits up in the black of night, his skin white and his eyes like the sky.  


“Yes. But that’s the point.”  


“Right…”  


Cas frowns at him. Disappointed. He knows that look. He hates it. “Dean, what am I going to do with you?”  


Dean shrugs against the cold ground and points up. “That one’s Pleiades. Happy now?”  


And Cas just sits next to him, hands flat on the grass, and gazes upwards like he can’t bear to look down.  


-

  
“Crimes of passion are pathetically ordinary. Any bored housewife can slide a knife across her husband’s throat. There are songs about it. The songs are important, Dean, you need to listen to them. They’re all about death. All of them.”  


Dean raises his eyebrow at that. When he’s clean, when he hasn’t been on a hunt or he has been sufficiently bathed after one, they lie on whatever lumpy bed is in the motel of the week. It’s strangely companionable and dangerously relaxed. He lets his guard down too much for this man. It’s going to be the death of him. “Even _Stayin’ Alive_ ?”  


“Distraction,” Cas says firmly. “It’s all… a lot of things are. It takes art to kill someone properly, you know. As you know. You have to perfect your craft. As you have. And have compassion.”  


“Not sure compassion comes into it, actually.”  


“You’re a marksman. You don’t need that part.”  


He fails to see how Cas has any compassion, not a sliver of it, but he doesn’t argue. It’s too nice a night to argue with him. He strokes his hand over Cas’ hair. “Alright. Skip the compassion. Got it.”  


He makes a soft, appeased noise in the back of his throat. “And you have talent. Makes up for your rough edges.”  


“You like my rough edges.”  


“Mm. Perhaps I do.”  


Dean nips his lower lip lightly. “I won’t tell anyone.”  


“Best not. Be a terrible pity. Your tongue’s too clever to cut it out.” Cas’ eyes are close and luminous, bright as starlight. “It’s all music, you see. The ballad of an angel and his hunter. It’s rather a sad song.”

  
He bumps their noses together and wonders what it takes to calm him. The storm of him. Beyond this moment, this room. If Dean really wants to find out. “Sing me it, then.” 

  
“Oh no. It hasn’t been finished yet.”  


-

  
Cas is an ardent obsessive. It’s what makes his work in particular so beautiful. And that’s what it is – he thinks Dean is uneducated and brutish and that’s what he likes so that’s how Dean plays it. Dean’s work isn’t beautiful, it’s ugly. But when Cas’ plans come together, Dean feels the same as when he sees a certain painting, as when he hears a piece of music that twists in his gut.  


He knows more than he ever lets on, and he knows certain things in his bones, knows them all too well. Cas’ life is a work of exquisite art. It’s the most captivating thing, to see it up close. Intoxicating. To be at the right hand of the angel when he weaves his magic web all around the lives of the innocent and the ordinary.

  
The rest of the world looks bland and inconsequential, being so close to greatness. Dean is obsessed with it.  


And Cas is obsessed with him, too.  


It comes to the fore slowly, how he keeps Dean close and then closer, makes him less of a marksman than a bodyguard. A friend.  


Guard. This. Body.  


Everyone is terrified of the fire at the core of Cas’ earth but Dean is burning in its heart, happily.  


“You’re my hunter,” he tells Dean, tangling their legs together in bed. “I can cage you and no one else can. And… you… don’t… mind.”  


He’s crazy, of course he is. There’s something wrong with Cas and sometimes Dean catches himself thinking of that magic bullet. The metaphorical one. A pill or something, something that might make him different. Less… driven. Less.  


But that’s insanity, as well. The idea of taking him apart, even if he could. Madness. It must be catching.  


Cas watches him with bright, tired eyes. “You pledged your life to me. Signed with blood. Yours, mine.”

  
Dean smirks. “Did I now? When did I do that?” 

  
He blinks and lays his hand over Dean’s heart, his fingers turning to claws, digging in. “From the start. You know, people are terrified of complexity. Take notes, Dean, I won’t repeat myself. Listen. You have to give them something easy. Or they don’t know. They’re running scared before you’ve a chance to show them anything good.” 

  
“Thought you wanted them scared?”  


“I want them on their knees. Execution style. Not headless chickens. Cluck, cluck, cluck. In my head. All day. Unbearable. Do you hear it? It makes me itch.”  


He doesn’t answer. Runs his hand down Cas’ cool back. “It’ll be quiet if you sleep.”  


“No, it won’t,” Cas sings back at him. He sounds almost unconscious already and it’s a momentary thought, that Dean could stab him now. Could make him stop, make it all stop. “The world is burning, the world is burning, fetch the engines, fetch the engines…”  


Dean closes his eyes. _Fire, fire._ _  
_

  
-

  
Cas is careful. That’s something people are eager to forget. That he’s careful and considering and not prone to taking unfavourable chances. He has this surprising belief in destiny, in fate, he’s a dreamer sometimes and he likes the stars, knows all the constellations like friends, but he doesn’t tend to be reckless.  


When he tells Dean about his plan, it sounds like a suicide mission. He can see Cas running into a fire bigger than himself and not coming out. He isn’t a phoenix. He’s just…  


He’s this. Something fractured and healed wrong. Dean has broken enough bones to know the feeling.  


He doesn’t say the things he wants to, because those are unspoken. Have been for years.

 

_But I’m yours. What would I do without that? Where would I go?_

  
Cas’ face is blank. “Doesn 't it sound easy?” 

  
“Sounds…” He checks himself before he can say stupid. Cas will destroy him for that word. Once Dean said it and Cas knocked him unconscious, surprisingly fast and powerful for someone who seems to spend most of their time fawning dover nature. He was a killer, though. In the same way as Dean is. “Sounds like you need to think it through a bit more. Or explain it better,” he adds hurriedly, “I’m probably missing something.”  


That’s not good enough, though. Cas’ expression turns to thunder and he jumps up from the sofa, pacing. “He thinks he knows best. Should’ve had him neutered.” It’s said playfully and Dean knows better than to hear it like that. Cas isn’t looking at him anymore, talking to the empty room at large, all big gestures and straightened spine. Showboating for no one in particular, or whoever it is he sees. Whatever.  


It’s a threat, and not a well-guarded one. A promise. _Keep testing me. Keep testing your place._  


But this matters. And if Dean valued his life at all, he wouldn’t be here at all. If he valued anything more than Cas and Sam, he’d be long gone.  


He tries to brush it under the carpet. “Come here. You like my cock too much to chop it off.”  


Cas fixes him with a blank stare. “Lessons must be learned, Dean.”  


Dean clears his throat and changes tack. This isn’t the right time for games. “I’m only saying. Presuming you’ve told me half of your master plan… dude, I just don't think it'll work.”  


“Have you not been listening?” He lowers his voice. “He’s not been listening.”  


“No, I heard you. I hear you. I just don’t think it’s fool proof. What if…”  


“There’s always a contingency plan.”  


There is something in how he says it. Clear and with none of his usual bluster. No shouting, no theatrics. No control lost at all. Just something solidly honest. A confession, perhaps one that has been made before.

 

 

  
_Aren’t they all dead, anyway?_  
  
_Yes. But that’s the point._

 

 

  
Dean sees it in his eyes then. It’s a familiar thing. He has seen it in the mirror, year on year. A death wish flickering in the darkness. “Cas…” 

  
“You don’t have to worry about anything.” Cas comes over and puts his hand on Dean’s cheek, thumb stroking. Once for each of his words. Sebastian sets his jaw and doesn’t break eye contact, refuses to. “I. Know. Best.”

 

 

  
_No_ _you don’t._  


_You don’t know anything, you cocky little son of a bitch. You don’t know anything about keeping yourself safe. I kept you. I kept you out of the light. You made me and I made you and you don’t know that. You know about the stars and the falling of things and you don’t know anything else._  


_You don’t know how to let me do my job._  


_You don’t know how much I need._  


_How much I need._  


_You._  


 

 

Once, he says to Dean, “You stay in the shadows, Dean. That’s where you’re most useful. That’s where I can use your talents best.”  


After, after everything, Dean hears _that’s where I can keep you safe_ , and he thinks that even the most lost people have something light in them. And even the best people can get trapped in the dark.  
  


_~happily ever after~_  
  


Empires aren’t built on flights of fancy and abject lunacy. But that’s the easy story. When Castiel is brought back from the dead in every way but the one that matters – it’s easier for him to be a monster.  


_Stars don’t last forever. Nothing does, nothing can. It’s only the light you see that matters. That’s what everyone cares about. Attaches meaning to._ _Lessons must be learned, Dean._  


But Cas was wrong. Some things last. The light does count for something, when there’s nothing else left behind. The echoes of light and heat. A cold white hand wrapping around a black heart.  


The newspapers really are fairy tales, Dean thinks, just lies laced together with more lies and the willingness to swallow them, dirty print rubbing off on palely innocent hands.  


Except no one’s innocent. None of them think. Sheep. One after another.  


They all make Cas the thing lurking under the bed, hiding in the dark wardrobe, living in the shadows in the alley. A ghost story to be passed around, slipped hand to hand and mouth to mouth. A story to scare the kids with.  


More myth than man.  


Dean cleans his gun and shoves the overcoat deep into the car and thinks _you’d have liked this, wouldn’t you? Even with everything being undone. Becoming bigger than yourself. You wrote it like this and none of them know. No one knows. No one knows you. You made it all up. The storyteller. The God._  


_You’d have liked all this._  


 

 

 

_But I don’t._

**Author's Note:**

> owo 
> 
> Sorry, Cas.
> 
>  
> 
> Comments and criticisms are appreciated and valued!


End file.
